Acer President Jim Wong said in a recent discussion that while his company has "ongoing" plans for a future ARM-based Windows tablet, "There's no value doing the current version of RT."

The frank snub of Windows on ARM (officially, Windows RT) might seem overly harsh, were it not for the cold hard sales numbers. According to market research firm International Data Corp. (IDC), sales of Windows RT tablets -- including Microsoft's own flagship "Surface RT" product -- tanked to a total of 200,000 in Q1 2013. That's a mere 0.4 percent of the 49.2 million tablets that shipped in Q1.

We're very excited about Microsoft's strategy around Windows RT. We're very optimistic with the future of Win RT and we see continued success.

Windows RT launched on devices from major manufacturers last October and used Qualcomm Snapdragon processors. Qualcomm is working with many more OEM's to launch on Win RT in the future and has a long-term investment in it.

We're not discouraged. Whenever you launch a brand new ecosystem like Windows RT it would be nice to have a home run from day one. But there's lots of excitement about what's coming.

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is reportedly unhappy with the struggles of its new operating system. Those struggles can largely be traced back to two factors -- lack of legacy compatibility with old x86 apps on ARM devices and poor marketing of this new type of Windows devices.

There wasn't really a very clear positioning of what Windows RT meant in the marketplace, what it stood for relative to Windows 8, that was being done in an effective manner to the consumer. When we did some tests and studies on how we could go to market with a Windows RT device, we determined there was a lot of heavy lifting we still needed to do to educate the customer on what Windows RT was. And that heavy lifting was going to require pretty heavy investment. When we added those two things up, the investments necessary to educate the consumer on the difference between RT and Windows 8, plus the modest feedback that we got regarding how successful could this be at retail from our retail partners, we decided maybe we ought to wait.

He said that his company would not be shipping the Windows RT-powered Ativ Tab tablet to U.S. shores anytime soon, concluding, "We want to see how the market develops for RT. It's not something we're shelving permanently. It's still a viable option for us in the future, but now might not be the right time."

Other executives have recently been laying it on the embattled OS. Neil Hand, head of Dell Inc.'s (DELL) tablet and high-end PC business, recently commented, "Demand is not where I would like it to be at this point in time. The amount of market information about it is not good enough, and the market sentiment is still pretty negative."

The world's fastest growing OEM, Lenovo Group, Ltd. (HKG:0992) has attacked its business appeal. Lenovo Think PC and visual category manager Simon Kent blasted RT, commenting, "We don't believe that Windows RT is what businesses want. This is particularly true for a premium product such as Helix, which gives you the performance and capability of a full Ultrabook as well as a business tablet. Even Microsoft has started to review the RT path they have gone down."

Dell and others have also attacked the quality of Windows ARM apps. There are currently around 65,000 ARM-compatible apps in The Windows Store.

Qualcomm VP Pineda insists that Windows RT is a superior experience. He points to the Dell XPS10, which uses are 1.2 GHz Snapdragon 8060A processor. He remarks, "This is the ideal machine for me. It gives me 20 hours of battery and runs more than a day, and is thinner and has no fan and provides 4G LTE access. It has all the software I need."

Microsoft has refused to quit the struggling operating system, believing it to be a key to future success. The next release is expected to come later this year with Windows 8.1 (codenamed: "Blue").

You are. Windows RT is the tablet version of Windows, tablets (whether Android or iOS) don't run desktop apps and people don't expect them to. I have a Surface RT and there's exactly one desktop app that I want it to run (The GURPS Character Assistant) other than that if I want to run desktop apps I use my desktop.

Similarly my parents and sister aren't clambering to jailbreak their Kindles and iPad to run their desktop apps either.

Opening Windows RT would be nice for the hobbyist market, but for the vast majority of people it would simply reduce security with no benefit beyond being able to use alternate markets (guess what percentage of tablet owners even know they can use alternate markets on Android).

quote: That's for people who actually DO want both the tablet form-factor and the ability to run desktop apps.

Right... the very small minority... maybe. That is of course your opinion, seeing as we lack solid statistical analysis on how many have sold, and how people use them, etc. But you miss my point, if you buy a keyboard cover with the Surface (RT or PRO) it is no longer just a tablet, it is a small laptop too. And it runs Windows. IOS and Android aren't expected to run windows desktop apps because, well, they don't run windows. My question still stands... why put limits on what windows tablets can run? Sure some like you only want modern ui apps, but some of us want more. Apparently that's asking too much when it comes to Windows on ARM, and it's a mute point with x86 tablets...